What I do is now I'm focused on still the marketing and sales components and
helping your business grow, but doing it in a way where I can help
you build your own team, develop your own strategy, so you can do
everything in house and do all that with remote workers, so it is feasible,
it can be consistent. And look, when you're trying to grow a
small business, there's a couple of things right. The first thing is one,
they tend to become all consuming, so there's so much to do,
There's so many different things pulling our attention so many different ways. It's difficult
not to just constantly be working and constantly get be wrapped up in with the
business needs. And the second thing is you're listening to Carrie Let's's Financial Survival
Network, where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to thrive
in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more than ever.
Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your free newsletter and gift.
Financial Survival Network now more than ever, and welcome you are listening to and
watching the Financial Survival Network. We are on the road. I am in
Thailand right now and playing the Digital Nomad and Hey, any of you people
out there in Thailand, I'll be here for another week and a half or
so. Shoot me at email kl at Carrie Lutz dot com if you want
to get together. Love to see you. I've already met John. John
been a loyal fan of the show for many years and him and his wife
were so nice. Showed me all over Bangkok, introduced me to people where
I am now, I'm further south than the country and just have been having
the most amazing time. The food, the people, the culture, it's
amazing. My producer Melissa's schedules a meeting with Scott Cox. We're talking and
it turns out we're like a couple of miles away from each other. Hey,
Scott, you've been playing the Digital Nomad for quite a while now.
It's great to have you on the show, and I know you've got some
useful information if you are a small business you're looking to scale up, and
you're looking to not work for the business, but have the business work for
you. Because so many times I've been in this small businesses, you wind
up you are working for the business. You've got a job, and what
Scott, you help people do is actually liberate themselves from that so that the
business works for them, building remote teams to just tell us how you do
this. Yeah, so again, thanks for having me on and I look
forward to connecting here. So it's going to be it's gonna be a lot
of fun. I love living in Thailand, love living this digital nomad life.
And you know, I left these dates probably two years ago. At
this point, I've been traveling around South America Southeast Asia, probably two best
regions of world. And yeah, it's been a good life. And so
you know, I had a marketing agency for quite a few years before I
started this, and you know, one of the reasons why I transitioned was
because as a facilitator of you know, like I had my own team and
I would go to small businesses and I would help them implement you know,
marketing through my team. You know, it just there was a disconnect between
the small business owners really getting it and how much I was really able to
help them scale because we would come in, we would help the market,
they would start to have you know, success, they would have more sales,
and then they didn't know what to do, so they would struggle to
hire. They would struggle to know systems to put in place. They would
struggle to know the processes all these things. And I struggled with this stuff
too, like it was my thing, scaling my business. I you know,
I thankfully and luckily I had some really good mentors that were in my
circle that could really help me and guide me. You know. I even
had like one of my good friends is a he's a really art or programmer,
developer. He built his own CRM from scratch and so he's like a
systems process guy, and he really helped me get in that mindset of cultivating
that. And so what I do is now I'm focused on still the marketing
and sales components and helping your business grow, but doing it in a way
where I can help you build your own team, develop your own strategy so
you can do everything in house and do all that with remote workers, so
it is feasible, it can be consistent. And look, when you're trying
to grow small business, there's a couple of things, right. The first
thing is one, they tend to become all consuming, so there's so much
to do. There's so many different things pulling our attentions so many different ways.
It's difficult not to just constantly be working and constantly get be wrapped up
in with the business needs. And the second thing is it's expensive to grow
business. It's expensive and time consuming in and of itself. And so you
know, utilizing remote workers, which is what I started doing when I started
my marketing agency, has really been a game changer. It's allowed me to
hire quality employees. It's allowed me to you know, automate systems and processes
in my business, or at least take them off of my blate. I
don't have to worry about them. And so, you know, when I
was in my marketing agency seeing all these happen, all these things happened,
seeing the business owners my clients struggle with these things, you know, I
just said, hey, I can help people in a bigger, more impactful
way. I live an amazing life, as we've discussed them in Thailand,
and I've been bouncing around the world. And whether people want to travel or
not, they want to spend more time with their family, or they want
to volunteer more in their communities, whatever it is that people want to do.
A small business is a path to that, but you have to do
it correctly. And so my goal is to help we'll get more out of
life by creating a small business actually serves them, like you said, instead
of them serving small business. Yeah, So how do you do it correctly?
What is the key towards towards making the business work for you and not
being a slave to your business? Yeah? Well, and I mean this,
I think this conversation has been quite It has been discussed in different circles
quite a bit, and so you can find this. It's nothing new,
but it's it's systems, processes and people. Right. But the biggest thing
here is and a lot of people say that, right, systems process people.
You know, you put a system at place, you give them,
you hire people, and you give them a process to work the systems,
and that's it, right, And it essentially is that the biggest thing is
is us as business owners. There's so many in so many areas when it
comes to managing people, knowing how to create systems, you know, putting
these processes. We are just typically not educated and we have little experience on
how to do these things successfully and navigating different problems that come up. And
so it is some processes. It's hey, if you are trying to do
some sales, you should have a CRM, and you should have you know,
a salesperson that's made not CRM, and you know you should give them
an instruction on how to utilize the CRM so it matches the workflow in your
business. But those things tend to see these seem to be pretty foreign with
you know, small business owners. Even if we just look at sales,
then we look at marketing, like how does some owner put together a sales
pitch successfully that allows them to sell their business? You know, And so
there's so many things within us. You know, that's my biggest My biggest
thing is you know, we can look at those three items, but you
know we we have to be able to be willing to grow and learn and
and change and change, right the jet D to see where change? Yeah,
well, you know it's even like the biggest objection I get to hiring
remote workers is well, what can they do? And can I trust them?
You know? And it's honestly good. Probably you can probably trust them
more than you can trust someone you know from a Western country. To be
honest, they're hard at working, they want to perform well, they actually
see your job at or to six dollars an hour as a great opportunity for
right, so they appreciate, you know, Versus you're going to pay someone
in the States. I don't even know what you pay now, I mean
what the twelve fifteen dollars an hour twenty end up? If you want some
actually, yeah something right, So it's insane what you're gonna pay. Versus
you can go find someone who's gonna work twice as hard. They're going to
be more loyal, they're gonna stay much longer in your business for you know,
five bucks an hour, six bucks an hourly, you know you're gonna
go there three boy, they're grateful, right, gightful for the position.
Yeah here, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, thank you. You
know all those things where you know, even maybe a twenty dollars hour play
in the state should still get you know, begrudging looks and you know,
showing up late and you know who knows what it's Oh. I always say
that there's a two kinds of people in the world, those who can't do
enough for you and those who can't do enough for you. Right right,
exactly exactly. We lost your camera there, I lost your camera and your
mic and my mike. Oh, now you're there. Now we got it.
Sorry about that. I was just switching around apps here. So hey,
I always say there's two kinds of people in the world, those who
can't do enough for you and those who can't do enough for you. And
certainly hiring remotely, you know, they might not have the knowledge base,
but they are very trainable, motivated because they're grateful for this opportunity because hey,
six bucks an hour in Thailand is some major money for these people.
It's life changing for them. Yeah, And here's the thing is where we're
at this these days, right, you have technology, We have AI software,
especially when it comes to marketing and sales. You know, tasks and
skill sets that that you know, most businesses are trying to get done.
You campair, you know, a five dollars an hour VA who maybe has
eighty percent ninety percent English capability with chat GBT or an app like Hemingway,
where it's going to basically take what they've written, it's going to expand on
it and then you can drop it into a Hemingway which is going to reformat
it into great English at a certain reading level whatever you want, which is
going to give you amazing content. You know, at a really digestible reading
level. But then you're paying five dollars an hour to get it done.
So really, you know, maybe a couple of years ago I could see
like, yeah, you know, okay, if you need someone who is
like a really proficient English copywriter, you're gonna have to pay more. And
we're talking like ten dollars an hour, which if you've been in business,
you've been in marketing, you know copywriters go for way more than that.
But you know, with AI, it's just I mean, they can work
faster, they can get more done and better quality. Well, right now,
as we speak, my AI note taker read dot AI is transcripting this.
It's going to come up with a summary, and then I take that
and use it to write show notes. It enabled me. I had somebody
who was paying twenty plus dollars an hour or two in the States who wrote
show notes. She was amazing, but she didn't really understand the business that
I'm in. What I do. Now, I take this and it's about
ninety percent as good as her. I pay for this red AI one hundred
twenty dollars a year and instead of one hundred and twenty a week or one
hundred and fifty or two hundred and you know, and my workflow has improved,
So the AI can really do a lot for you. So that's just
one example of what you can do. And when you're when you're looking to
help people and you know you onboard them into your process, what are you
looking for when you take on a client, Because you don't just take anybody
on. They've got to meet a certain criteria because you only want to work
with people who are going to be successful, right Scott. Yeah, And
I mean sometimes you know, it's hard to know who exactly is going to
be successful. But yeah, I mean pretty much the kind of client that
I'm looking for is going to be someone who's in the service industry. It
could be residential services, it could be blue collar, it could be white
collar services. That's kind of really my niche from the marketing agency. That's
what I know really well. It's also one of the more difficult industries I
think to market versus something like an e commerce. I mean, they all
have their pros and cons, but yeah, it's goodbal services, yeah,
yeah, but services industry you know probably doing you know, I've you can
go to my website, have varying packages. So the first kind of offer
I have is an audit where I come in and I just basically we have
like one hundred and seventy five point audit, We go through your business and
we just kind of highlight all the problems for you. So anyone at that,
anyone at any level could benefit from that. Obviously probably want to be
doing around you know, six figures a year, you know, one hundred
thousan in a year, one hundred twenty thousand a year to really benefit from
that, are implementing, and then you know, you need to be in
a mode of looking to hire. You need to be you need to be
open to the idea of letting go of some of the things in your business.
So, you know, starting around one hundred thousand and up, you
know, a lot of my clients are in the sixth you know, six
figure to low seven figure range looking to scale the multiple seven figures, but
at the same time not be making you know, one and a half million
dollars a year, be profiting fifty thousand, you know, and so,
and be working eighty hours a week in the business, which is how out
of seem to be building their businesses who wants to do that. I mean,
I've been there, done that, I got the T shirt, I
was successful, but knowing what I know now, I would just never do
it the way then. Yeah, say, man, I want a simple
life. I want to enjoy my life. So you know, if I
can hire some remote workers, I can get some AI software, and I
can get some systems in place to help manage everything, and I can work,
you know, ten to twenty hours a week and live a great life
in Thailand or wherever I am. And you know, so happiness, right,
the happiness factor. Everything you do should be aimed at achieving happiness and
a blissful balanced state. But unfortunately not usually the case. You know that
old saying most people lead a life of a quiet desperation. Yep, absolutely,
yeah, you know, I think happiness is one of those things where
I don't necessarily think that's the goal, because happiness, you know, can
fade different times and things like that. But I think you choose to be
happy, and I think if your environment is correct, it's much easier to
choose to be happy. So like you can create an environment where you know,
you don't have to be like, I'm going to be happy today you
know, like, you know, you can just be happy because you've created
a simple life. And I think that's one of the problems. You know.
We were talking, you know, briefly before we started the podcast about
you know, the US and everything, and I think that's just one of
the things that the West does, especially the US, does really well,
is they just keep people busy. And I think that part of people in
the rat race, if we keep them busy, they'll be distracted and they
want, you know, on the wheel exactly, hold out a little food,
hold out some drugs, to hold out to entertainment prospects. But you
know, what we're talking about here is the difference between I heard a doctor
say it on YouTube. It's not my thing. He says, pleasure is
dopamine happy. This is they're atoning, right, and it's so true.
So hey, I'm going to put you on the spot here, Scott.
Three things if you're a business owner you can do right now to up your
marketing game. All right. Three things. Start documenting what you're doing.
You don't have to just create random content or try to create random content.
Document what you're doing. That's a Gary v thing that has always been true
and resonated with me. So just document it, put that out there for
people to see, and let's see. What would the third thing be,
Document what you're doing, put it out there, and be consistent, honestly,
be consistent. That those would be the three things, as simple as
that, because most people aren't. Most people are documenting what they're doing to
create these Uh, they're trying to create these you know, like like a
lot of small business owners and it's just because we don't know. But we'll
go out and we'll hire a spend five thousand dollars on a company to do
a three minute commercial, right, and it's like, no one's watching a
three minute commercial any more. Yeah, there's no way. Man. If
you get them to watch for fifteen seconds, you're doing amazing, right,
So you know there will document what you're doing, make and that'll be interesting
because people are actually and you see this on TikTok, right. You see
how many people are just you know, metal workers and wood fabricators and all
these things and they're just literally have a camera on a tripod and they're just
recording and talking to the camera. It's fascinating and I have to tell you,
I got to tell you a funny story about that. Yeah, toilet
in my house. It was doing what's called phantom flushing because leaking the flapper
isn't the ceiling, so the water drains out and then when it gets to
a certain point, it flushes, and that's called phantom flushing. So I
said, well, hey, I'm pretty handy. I'm going to go onto
YouTube and I'll find I'll find some plumbers to tell you how to fix it,
what to do. So I go and they say, buy a flapper,
and so I buy it, and of course I buy a universal flapper,
which I come back and I said, well, as long as I'm
doing one toilet, I'll do the other toilet too, because it's probably going
to need it. So of course the universal flapper is not universal. It
doesn't fit mine. So back to home depot, return them, get to
get the other universal flapper. I get that, and all right, I
pulled the other one out. I made the mistake of not turning off the
water and there's a hose that goes into the float and I'm not the hose,
and all of a sudden, water is shooting all over the place.
I'm drenched. I'm cursing my brains out. Finally I get to wherewithal,
I turn off the water and the toilet, which I should have started with,
and I do. I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm going to
have to call a plumber here now to come fix this thing, and he's
gonna laugh at me, and I'm gonna have to pay more money for him
to fix my mess. Well, I get my wits about me, put
the hose back in, change the flapper. The phantom flushing stopped. So
the point is, when you start doing this, you're gonna get soaking wet
because I'm gonna make mistakes. But the end and goal the satisfaction of not
having to call the plumber to come fix your mess out these the uncomfortability that
you encounter. So I think I think you really could teach people a lot.
Hey, how do we find you? How do we connect with you
on the web? Assuming that we're not traveling to Thailand. Yeah, if
you're coming to Thailand, I'm here for a while, so definitely, uh
you know, let me know. But you can go to my website at
Stxconsulting dot co, so you can find out more about what I do there.
But you can also connect with me on social I have a YouTube channel
where I publish videos. We're actually changing up the style of videos. We're
going to start doing more documentary and stuff and kind of I've done a lot
of videos on sales, marketing and vas or remote workers. So if you're
looking for how to do those things, all of that content is on your
channel. We've got sixty something videos on there that highlight those things from a
top level that can be applied to any business. And now we're going to
start kind of We're still talking about those things, but I'm going to be
showing how this plays out in my life, because see, people seem to
be way more interested in how I actually live my life by implet themselves,
right, So we're going to be highlighting that and showing my life of getting
multiple passports and moving countries and you know, how do I like, how
do I just literally decided to move to Thailand in December. Two weeks later
I left Indonesia and now I'm living in Thailand. I'm like, when you
have a business, how do you do that? You know, like,
I think most people want to saw to do that. So you can follow
me on YouTube at no Mad Talk and that oh is a zero, so
n zero mad talk and then you can find me on Instagram, Facebook,
everywhere else at the same handle and zero mad talk and yeah, in follow
my jail reach out. All right, excellent, man, Hey, we
really appreciate you coming on. Got a question for Scott or myself. The
email address is kl at Carrie LUTs dot com. Even though I am twelve
thousand miles away from Florida, I'm still getting all my emails and everything.
I've got the local Tie cell phone service, so I've got my data,
so I'm still a data junkie. Kl at Kerrie LUTs dot com. We
return everything and hey to get Scott's link and everything else. It's in the
show notes this interview on Financial Survival Network dot com. And while you're there,
sign up for a free newsletter. Scott. Been a pleasure. We
will definitely connect soon. Sounds good. Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial
Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go
to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever